13 Comments

1. Old Geezer  •  Sep 2, 2009 @2:19 pm
   

   You are right that "…Fire protection is not the same as health care…." Perhaps it should be. As a former firefighter/EMT I have seen the overlap between the two. In our case, over 90% of our calls were medical/trauma-related. But looking purely at the "fire protection" side of the coin, the differences are obvious. Many (most?) people will never need the professional fire suppression services of the fire department. Yet, most of us will need medical care at least once this year. If your house burns down (without you in it) you will suffer some problems, but you are more likely to recover from that than from a serious, sudden illness. If you do call the fire department, you won't be asked for a credit card number or the name of your fire suppression insurance carrier before you can "see the fireman." And, when we went out of the station to engage in fire prevention, whether by clearing brush or advising people to not store gasoline next to the water heater, no one claimed it was an "uncovered expense." Oh, and wanting to talk to a firefighter before your house caught fire wasn't characterized as an invitation to arson. It was called good communication.

2. TomH  •  Sep 2, 2009 @2:32 pm
   

   Funny – Yes

   But, somehow I always get criticized (mostly by my wife) for my over the top, hyperbolic arguments.

   Now, if the Federal Government tried to micromanage fire departments (police, schools, local roads and libraries, like their T-shirts show) – well, then I think we would have a problem.

3. laiq  •  Sep 2, 2009 @3:53 pm
   

   As another former Firefighter/EMT (in Canada), I concur with Old Geezer. While fires are much more likely to get firefighters on the news, emergency medical response constitutes a much larger chunk of modern firefighting.

   Whether or not that makes firefighting the same as heath care really depends on your level of abstraction, but there's definitely a shared focus and attitude between firefighters, paramedics, and emergency room doctors and nurses. Whether you go to the patients or they come to you really doesn't make a difference.

4. David Kassin Fried  •  Sep 3, 2009 @7:08 am
   

   Old Geezer, I think you're taking a pretty limited view of what a privatized fire department could look like. I picture it being more akin to AAA than Nero's Rome – perhaps it's something that you purchase a separate membership or protection policy for, perhaps it gets added on to your homeowners insurance. And, like with a health insurance policy, your rates are determined by your risk factors and your willingness to mitigate those – don't smoke, make sure your wiring is up to code, etc. Whatever it is, I can see a ton of strategies that would be primarily preventionist, rather than reactionary. Because, truth be told, a good security system will prevent burglaries far more effectively and for far less money than a police department could ever react to them.

5. Chris  •  Sep 3, 2009 @8:48 am
   

   We've had privatized fire departments. They didn't work so well. That's part of why we now have public ones.

6. Ezra  •  Sep 3, 2009 @9:25 am
   

   And once again, the fundamental problem with Libertarianism to me, it's great if you can afford it. Who puts out the fires in the poor inner cities or rural areas?

7. Patrick  •  Sep 3, 2009 @9:43 am
   

   Typically that's done by volunteer fire departments Ezra. There are volunteer fire departments in rural areas all over America.

   You ought to get out now and then.

8. Ezra  •  Sep 3, 2009 @9:54 am
   

   Heh, I was too busy reading the New York Times. My Dad was on the VFD in Ross Texas when I was little. I know about them, I also know that (in Texas at least) they are almost always funded by taxes or local governments, so in Libertarian utopia they would not exist.

9. Patrick  •  Sep 3, 2009 @10:02 am
   

   And there you go assuming you're speaking to a capital L libertarian again Ezra. This extends from the prior thread. You're attacking a straw man, and it's getting irksome.

   Shall I assume that you favor state worker and education assignments for all, collective ownership of all property, state-directed agriculture and food production, mandatory abortion for families with more than one child, collectivization of all art and culture into people's cooperatives, and enforcement through reeducation camps? I'm happy to discuss this with someone who isn't you, if that's what you wish.

10. Old Geezer  •  Sep 3, 2009 @2:08 pm
    

    Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We had private fire departments in the early days of the U.S. They failed for two reasons. One, if you did not have the badge of the private department displayed on the front of your home, the private firefighters would come up, stop and watch your house burn down. (Sort of like not having health coverage today when you need surgery.) The second method was pay-after-play. In this case, rival departments would pull up and then engage in fist fights over who got to put the fire out and collect the fee. This often resulted in the house burning down while they sorted it out. Nothing converts a Libertarian's thinking quite like having a burglar, a heart attack or a fire in your home.

    Patrick, some volunteer fire departments are excellent. Some not so much, like the one our department covered for during the daylight hours because all of their members worked out of town. In any event, "volunteer" and "private" are two vastly different things. Most volunteer departments live hand-to-mouth with the hand-me-downs of nearby paid departments and are always scratching around for funds. You didn't see many volunteer departments at the Station Fire, not out of a lack of interest, but because they couldn't afford to expend the resources. I'm guessing you wouldn't see too many private departments coming from Utah, New Mexico and Oregon to the Station Fire either, if it meant impacting the bottom line. Which private department would you want? Halliburton or Blackwater?

11. Ezra  •  Sep 4, 2009 @9:31 am
    

    Sorry, Patrick. I know you aren't John Hasnas or anything like that, and certainly didn't mean to imply such (although, honestly, I don't think I did…)

    At any rate, the rural areas are at least somewhat covered by VFDs, I'll certainly agree. However, with the idea of privatized fire departments, I don't think anyone can argue that inner cities (and the poor in general) aren't hosed.

    I still stand by my belief that Libertarianism (big or small L) is a rich man's game.

12. Patrick  •  Sep 4, 2009 @9:40 am
    

    Thank you Ezra. However, a thought: I think the poor are pretty well hosed in terms of government services even in the most progressive areas of the country. I've been to San Francisco and Oakland (sadly before we met online – I'd have loved a waffle breakfast at the pirate waitress place). I've been to Cambridge and Roxbury. I've been to DC and Alexandria.

    I work in Chapel Hill, but live in the far "funkier" city of Durham. For that matter, I've lived briefly in Leningrad, which also had its poor and rich sections and was run by a party that even then (you know how old I am) claimed to support the workers and to have abolished classes. The poor got screwed in terms of services everywhere I've been.

    How would a government that didn't strictly enforce the delineation between agricultural and residential zoning permits change that?

13. Chris  •  Sep 4, 2009 @6:59 pm
    

    Old Geezer, your argument that private firefighters wouldn't put out fires at non-customers as if that is a bad thing. It is no different than home insurance. Should State Farm pay you if your house burns down even if you weren't a customer? Of course not.

    There are legitimate arguments for FD as public good – but private fire fighters didn't "work out" because public departments forced them out.

    As far as the 'the poor get screwed" argument – it doesn't take much investigation to see accusations of city departments giving poor fire protection/ambulance services to poor neighborhoods. (http://bit.ly/1iPptY)

    The government is still a business and will provide the best services to where there is the most money. The biggest difference is that you don't get money options to change providers.